Standing Committee A

[Mr. David Amessin the Chair]

Clause 10

Work-focused health-related assessments

Danny Alexander: I beg to move amendment No. 31, in clause 10, page 9, line 17, at end add
‘who has undertaken such training in work-related needs and support as may be prescribed.’.

David Amess: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 261, in clause 10, page 9, line 17, at end add—
‘(9) A health care professional will not be approved by the Secretary of State unless he has undertaken such training in disabilities and health conditions as the Secretary of State may by regulation prescribe.’.

Danny Alexander: Thank you, Mr. Amess. It is good to be under your chairmanship today. The weather has somewhat improved since our previous sitting, and long may that continue. I gather from the radio this morning that I will be confronting storms, snow, ice and all sorts of other things when I return to my constituency this evening, so I hope that the atmosphere in the Committee this morning will be more in keeping with the atmosphere outside than with that in my constituency this evening.
Both the amendments would introduce training requirements into clause 10, which relates to work-focused health-related assessments. Amendment No. 31 specifies training in work-related needs and support. Amendment No. 261 refers to a health care professional having
“training in disabilities and health conditions”.
Both amendments seek to probe the Government’s intentions regarding the training of those who will carry out work-focused health-related assessments, and I gather that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), will respond to the debate, so my comments are addressed to her. I raise the issue because it was suggested in our previous debate that the assessments could sometimes be undertaken by different health care professionals from those who will carry out the limited capability for work and the limited capability for work-related activity assessments, and we had a good debate about the training needs of those involved.
My key point is that it is important for Ministers to make it clear that they will ensure that those who carry out these important work-focused health-related assessments—we have discussed their functions before, so I do not need to go into them again—have a proper understanding of the wide range of disabilities, impairments and health conditions that those they are talking to might have. That is the burden of amendment No. 261. If they have that understanding, they should—this is the burden of amendment No. 31—be able to understand such conditions and impairments and make health care recommendations that might enhance people’s ability to undertake work-related activity. With those few remarks, I ask the Under-Secretary to set out the Government’s intentions.

Jeremy Hunt: May I, too, welcome you back to the Chair, Mr. Amess? I look forward very much to serving under you as we discuss all the issues before us.
I want briefly to add to the comments made by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander). When we discussed training earlier, the Under-Secretary gave us an assurance that people would be provided with all the training necessary to ensure that what is envisaged in the Bill happens. However, I wonder whether she could respond a little more fully on that issue, because there are widespread concerns among disabled people and the organisations that represent them about the level of training to be given to those who do the assessments and to Jobcentre Plus staff. I know that the Under-Secretary takes a great interest in this issue, so could she say a little more specifically about what training will be undertaken to ensure that people understand hidden disabilities? People with learning disabilities, for example, are concerned that those disabilities might not be understood because they are not visible.
There is widespread concern about these issues, and I know that the Department will have the right intentions, but with the greatest respect to Ministers, it has not always delivered to the highest standard. Will the Under-Secretary therefore give some reassurances in that respect?

Anne McGuire: Like my colleagues, I am delighted to be here and to be under your chairmanship, Mr. Amess. It must be lovely to be the Chairman of a Committee, by the way. I do not know of any other group of MPs who get so many compliments so early in the morning—and sometimes even late at night; but I shall not go down that road.
I can offer the Opposition considerable reassurance. I understand the reason for their concern and for their wanting matters to be spelled out in Committee. As currently happens with Atos Origin doctors, all the health care professionals who will be involved in the process will undergo training specified and agreed by the Department’s chief medical adviser before being approved by the Secretary of State to carry out assessments. That will ensure that health professionals who carry out the work-focused health-related assessments will have been trained to the standard that the Secretary of State expects and thinks appropriate. A health care professional who has not been trained to that level will not be approved.

Alison Seabeck: I am reassured by that. Will the Under-Secretary further reassure the Committee that the number of trained people will be sufficient to provide capacity in the system to manage any surge that might happen at the beginning of the roll-out, such as was described by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) with reference to pathways to work in her constituency?

Anne McGuire: I can give my hon. Friend that assurance because we have set quite exacting targets for the gateway process and in our expectations of the health professionals. It is in everyone’s interest to make sure that that works properly, and that will be part of the continuing discussions with Atos Origin. We also need flexibility to change the training requirements,as may be necessary in the future. That is one reason why the amendments are unacceptable—although I appreciate that they are probing amendments.
I particularly want to reassure the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) that hidden disabilities will be one aspect of the training for the relevant health professionals. I hope that the whole Committee will accept our commitment: the training currently prescribed by the Secretary of State requires each practitioner to have a personalised continuous development plan, which includes models relating to a wide spectrum of medical subjects, including specific conditions. Practitioners must, in addition, undertake a series of modules on non-medical subjects such as cultural awareness. They may have to work with broader issues than just the medical side in their capacity as health professionals undertaking such important assessments.
I hope that that reassures the Committee, and, in particular, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, so that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Danny Alexander: I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for those remarks. She has given the reassurance that I wanted, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part ofthe Bill.

Danny Alexander: With your leave, Mr. Amess, there are some broader issues about the conditionality regime in the Bill that I should like briefly to draw to the attention of the Committee, and on which I should like to seek some assurances from the Under-Secretary of State. Those considerations pertain not just to clause 10 but to clauses 11 to 13, all of which come under the heading “Conditionality” in the Bill. I hope that discussing the matter now may help us to expedite proceedings on those clauses.
In our sitting on Tuesday afternoon the Minister of State entered into a quite lively discussion about the level of funding for pathways to work. I should like to return to that. It is important to put it on the record that the Bill, understandably, and, provided that the reassurances that I seek are given, justifiably, makes it clear, as he said in language that I would endorse, that it is based on the idea of responsibility. It is based on the idea that provided the support for individuals is in place and they are part of the work-related activity component, they have some degree of responsibility for availing themselves of that support. The Bill dwells at length on the individual’s responsibility, which is again understandable, given the nature of legislation in this area, but it does not dwell on the Government’s responsibilities.
I wish to press Under-Secretary of State a little on the reciprocal responsibility that exists on the part of the Government in exchange for the responsibility that individual claimants are being asked to undertake under these and other clauses relating to conditionality. I am sure that the Ministers would agree that it is important that the Government fully carry out their part of the bargain. It has been described as a something-for-something package: claimants are asked to give something in terms of responsibility and the Government undertake to provide something in terms of support to get them back into work. That is a reasonable proposition.
It is important to say that the Government have a particular responsibility, although it is not stated in the Bill, to reassure the Committee on a number of points. The first relates to funding, which we debated a little on Tuesday afternoon. I have carried out further work on that, partly as a result of the Minister of State’s prompting, building on written answers that he and his colleagues have provided to me over some months. I examined what the costs per claimant in the pathways regime were, and what they might be expected to be, given the predictions of the onflows on to incapacity benefit over the next few years, in the two-year period for which the £360 million has been allocated.
I do not wish to go through all the references in all the parliamentary questions on which this is based. However, if one takes into account all the different available elements in the pathways pilot areas within the choices package, the number of people who have been helped and the percentage of people who have been participating in the different elements of pathways, one comes to an estimate of the annual cost per claimant within the pathways project of £571 a head. My calculations, which are based on the figures that have been provided in answer to questions about the expected onflows on to IB—in other words, the new claimants to whom initially this is devoted— suggest that, even if the full £360 million were to be devoted entirely to the roll-out of pathways, which I shall come on to in a second, the annual funds per participant allocated for the national roll-out of pathways to work would be less than £327 a head.
I would be happy for Ministers to correct my figures or to give their own estimates. If the entire £360 million is to go to pathways, and one is talking only about new claimants over this period, on those calculations, there is a funding gap of £268 million.
On Tuesday, the Minister of State fairly made the point that the Government would spend whatever was necessary—that might not be an exact quote—and sought to make reassuring noises on this important point. I am delighted to hear reassuring noises from the Ministers in Committee, but I would be even more delighted and reassured to hear similar noises from the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his pre-Budget report about the sums that will be spent. This is a serious point, because if we are telling employment and support allowance claimants that they are expected to be part of a conditionality regime, it is important to make it clear to them that the promised help will genuinely be available at the promised levels throughout the country. That is the first point on which I would be grateful for the Under-Secretary’s response. The equation is simple: if there are to be responsibilities and obligations, there must also be opportunities for people to obtain the help that they need.
The Under-Secretary may want to debate whether my calculations are accurate and whether the £360 million is insufficient, but there is a second serious question on which the Committee would like reassurance. What proportion of that £360 million will be spent on the pathways to work roll-out—I raised that earlier but, perhaps due to the temper of the debate, it was not addressed—and what will be spent on other things? I understand that Ministers will seek leave to start spending money on implementing aspects of the Bill in advance of Royal Assent—that is an established procedure—particularly on setting up the benefit, which is understandable as there is not much controversy about the benefit. If that is the intention, will the Under-Secretary explain what proportion of the £360 million will be spent on benefit administration—setting up computer systems and so on—so that the Committee will have a genuine idea of how much will be spent on providing support and assistance for ESA claimants and how much will be spent on the necessary administrative tasks that will underpin the benefits?
A third aspect, which again relates directly to the nature of the proposed conditionality regime, is the extent to which the pathways to work regime is successful for all groups of claimants. That was drawn to the Committee’s attention earlier, but I want to highlight two groups of claimants. The first is those for whom their first reason for claiming benefit is mental health, and I distinguish that from learning disabilities. Secondly, several charities representing older people have said that there is not much evidence that older workers have benefited from the pathways to work regime.
It is important that the Under-Secretary addresses that. Both older workers and those whose first reason for claiming benefit is mental health but who do not satisfy any of the 46 descriptors will eventually be subject to the conditionality regime for recipients of the work-related activity component. It is important that the Under-Secretary sets out what steps the Government are thinking about and what ideas they have to improve the available support within the pathways regime for those people. Given that the conditionality regime is the same, it is important that the Government make it clear how they will ensure that support and assistance is available through pathways. Pathways has been remarkably successful for some groups of claimants and that should be welcome on both sides of the Committee, but it has not been so successful for other groups.
On mental health, I draw the Under-Secretary’s attention to the work of Professor Lord Layard on depression and the availability of, for example, cognitive behaviour therapy services within the NHS. I wonder whether the shortage of such services at the moment is one of the causes of the condition management programme being less successful for people in that category. Perhaps she will reflect on that.
These are broader considerations about the fairness of the proposed conditionality regime and the degree to which the Government are prepared to play their full part in the bargain. I fully accept the Under-Secretary’s good intentions, but the spending plans of some Ministers in the Department are subject to an annual reduction of, I believe, 5 per cent. over the next two or three years. In that context, how does the Under-Secretary foresee funds coming forward to ensure that the available support for ESA claimants is sufficient to ensure that the full roll-out is available, not just for new claimants but for existing claimants and members of the support group who wish to take part, so that the hopes that have rightly been generated as a consequence of our discussions are fulfilled, and people are not left disappointed at the end of this process?

Jeremy Hunt: I do not wish to speak at length even though it has been an important debate. Thanks to the analysis of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, we have come a little closer to matters of concern regarding the funding that has been put in place for the roll-out of the pathways to work programme under the Bill. If his figures are correct, there has been a drop in funding from £571 a head to a maximum—assuming that all the money is allocated to pathways to work—of £327 a head. In comparison with the pilot programmes, that is a 43 per cent. reduction in funding. How does the Under-Secretary square that with the response of the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform in our last sitting when I asked whether there would be enough funding? He said:
“The funding model will be the same”
and went on to say that
“we are absolutely satisfied that the necessary investment will be in place through the £360 million that we have set aside.”
If that is so, he has a duty to explain to the Committee why he thinks that it will be enough if it represents a minimum drop of 43 per cent. in the investment per head on the pathways roll-out.
The Under-Secretary might also clarify why, on Tuesday, in refusing to come to this 43 per cent. figure, the Minister also said:
“We are not going to set a target per head. It will take asmuch as it takes to support someone to get closer to thelabour market”.—[Official Report, Standing Committee A,24 October 2006; c. 195-99.]
Either he does have a limit on the amount of money that can be spent on this—the £360 million that would equate to a minimum 43 per cent. drop—or he does not. Ministers owe it not just to the Committee, but to all the people who will be on the programme, to explain why the Government are confident that a minimum43 per cent. reduction per head in funding will be enough to fund an adequate roll-out of the pathways programme.
I hope that the Under-Secretary will address my particular concerns about the people in the support group, because they have more severe disabilities and will therefore require the most help to move closer to the labour market. I am concerned that that level of reduction in funding will make it difficult to give the necessary additional support to those people, as it will be much more expensive and intensive than that for people with less severe disabilities.
I do not want to rake over the arguments about the failings of incapacity benefit, because we all agree that that system does not work—that is why the Bill was introduced—but I want to put my concerns to the Under-Secretary directly. There is concern on both sides of the House that the incapacity benefit system parks people who have an incapacity and effectively says, “We are paying you a little bit extra, but that is it.” The whole purpose of the new programme is to avoid that problem, and the Conservatives want to ensure that that mistake is not repeated with people in the support group. We want to make sure that all the options envisaged by the pathways to work programme are as available to people in that group as to those with less severe disabilities who are closer to the labour market.
I also agree with the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey about the importance of training, particularly cognitive behaviour therapy, and measures to help to build up people’s confidence if, for example, they have sustained a brain injury after a car crash. The work-focused health-related assessment will be an important part of that. However, it is difficult to understand how the sophisticated training and medical understanding necessary to help people with those issues will work in such an austere funding environment. I hope that the Under-Secretary can give the Committee significant reassurance about that.

Anne McGuire: To a certain extent, we are revisiting our debate on clause 9, but I shall deal with some specific issues and then refer, in particular, to funding. I reassure the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey that there has been significant support for older people—those who are over 50—through the new deal for disabled people as one of the options in pathways. Indeed, he might be interested to know that, during the past year, 200,000 more older people have now gone into work.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to rights and responsibilities. Will the Committee reflect on why we are here discussing the Bill? I shall not rake over the matter of incapacity benefit, but it is an example of when the Government expected individuals to take on all the rights and responsibilities themselves. In its generic sense, government abandoned people and their responsibilities to 2. 7 million people, a figure that was trebled under the previous Administration. It was a case when the Government decided to stand back and more or less let people stand where they hung. What underpins the Bill is the fact that we are rebalancing those rights and responsibilities. Yes, individuals must do something for something, but the Government also have a special responsibility to those who need additional support at particular times in their lives.

Jeremy Hunt: Does the Under-Secretary agree that that responsibility applies equally to the most severely disabled members of the support group, as it does to the less severely disabled members of the work-related activity group?

Anne McGuire: I wish to make it clear to the Committee that, when I talk about disabled people, I am not talking about one category of disabled people. When I refer to those who are in receipt of employment and support allowance, I am not talking about only one category. Of course, I mean people who are in receipt of the support element. I have spent my life working with disabled people and those who have learning difficulties, and I do not think that it is always necessary to put a lever in the discussions as the hon. Gentleman is doing. Of course, I mean all disabled people including those in receipt of support. I hope that he now takes it for granted that, when I am referring to the spectrum of people on employment and support allowance, I am talking about those who are furthest from the labour market and those who are most severely disabled.
Mr. Huntrose—

Anne McGuire: I will let the hon. Gentleman in, but to be frank with him he is trying my patience on this matter.

Jeremy Hunt: I will press the Under-Secretary. I accept her reassurance that she is talking about all disabled people, but does she therefore accept that it can often be a lot more expensive and resource-intensive to help those furthest from the labour market to have the same opportunities as those nearer the labour market?

Anne McGuire: I thought that the hon. Gentleman was about to come some way towards meeting me on that point. I remind the Committee that, when we introduced pathways to work, his party voted against every single penny of investment that we wanted to put in to support those who are most severely disabled as well as those who are closer to the labour market. I am sorry that I have had to inject a little bit of edge into the discussion, but it is about time that we started to realise that we are all on the same track on this matter. The hon. Gentleman continues diversifying and putting disabled people into inappropriate categories. I appreciate that there are specific issues relating to the support group.
Mr. Huntrose—

Anne McGuire: I am not going to allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene any more. I hope that he will now accept than when my colleague the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform and I talk about disabled people, we are encompassing all disabled people. That is the philosophy underpinning the Bill.
Perhaps I can now move on to other matters raised by hon. Members, specifically on financing. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey has done his calculations, looked at the parliamentary questions and so on, and come up with a figure. I can do nothing other than reiterate what my hon. Friend said in earlier discussions. We think that £360 million is the correct amount with which to roll out the pathways projects.
Opposition Members seem to get tied down in the unit cost. We are not into unit cost. The hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) smirks, so I shall explain why we are not into unit cost. As I said in an earlier debate, I operated employment programmes under a unit cost, which could be £13 a head, for example. The difficulty with the unit cost approach is that it does not allow the resources to be directed to those individuals who need more support and assistance, because there is a limit.
Mr. Huntrose—

Anne McGuire: Let me finish. Within a contract, some individuals do not, perhaps, need quite as much investment as others who happen to be on the pathways project. A unit cost limit is an artificial barrier to extra support for individuals.

Jeremy Hunt: The Under-Secretary talks about my making an artificial division between groups of disabled people, but I am not doing that; the Bill does it. Many disability organisations are concerned that, in reality, there is a wide spectrum of disabilities and it is hard to make such a division. We have accepted that division in the Bill. No one is saying—I think that I am also speaking for the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey—that the cost per head should be identical or that there should be equal costs for every person in the programme. An average cost per head, taken for the programme as a whole, would appear to be a huge reduction of 43 per cent in the roll-out of pathways to work. The Under-Secretary owes it to the Committee to explain why she thinks that it will be possible, with that level of reduction, to get the same good results on the roll-out of the pathways to work programme as in the pilots.

Anne McGuire: I re-emphasise the reassurances given by my colleague the Minister of State in earlier discussions—we have moved from a conversation to a discussion and perhaps even to a debate—that we are confident that our funding model will deliver our pathways programme. We can argy-bargy about the funding models in Committee till kingdom come and perhaps not get to the basis of an agreement. To a certain extent, as the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey said, it is about trusting our funding model and figures. We are sure that we can roll out pathways on the funding model that we have presented to the Committee.

Tim Boswell: In an effort to be emollient, I shall take a slightly different tack, and I anticipate that the answer to my question will be positive. Will the Under-Secretary assure the Committee that nothing will be built into the remuneration or general management appraisal of Jobcentre Plus staff or contractors in respect of ESA that would suggest that there was simply a target model? That might give rise to a perverse incentive through which people got more by processing volume rather than applying themselves to the particular cases of the individuals concerned.

Anne McGuire: I do not wish to embarrass the hon. Gentleman; I had a slightly more robust conversation with his Front-Bench colleagues. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, which I am happy to clarify. There will be no staff incentives in respect of the throughput of people on the pathways to work project. I hope that that reassures him. If the Committee felt that staff were on some sort of bonus, that might make life slightly more complicated and move against the underlying philosophy of the Bill.

Kali Mountford: Perhaps the approach of Opposition Members is a function of their never having been in government or having forgotten what that is like. Do we not learn a great deal from piloting, which this Government have often carried out? We have already taken account of all the set-up costs, so they do not have to be repeated, and we have carried out the pilots, which have been successful, so we now know how best to target resources. We do not have to spend money again on the things that the pilots taught us worked less well.

Anne McGuire: With her significant previous experience on the Treasury Committee, my hon. Friend understands such issues. I do not want to exhaust the Committee—
Mr. David Ruffley (Bury St. Edmunds) (Con) rose—

Anne McGuire: Okay, she says wearily.

David Ruffley: The Under-Secretary is weary; she is also more touchy than normal. However, I am grateful that she has eventually given way. [Interruption.] There is a bit of chuntering from a sedentary position, but I want to put my point to the Under-Secretary. There is a lot of confusion in this debate about the funding model. To clear that up, will she undertake to publish details of her funding model and the methodology and assumptions that underpin it, so that we can have an open debate about it?

Anne McGuire: Sometimes we in Committees forget that we are only part of a greater whole. Funding models will, of course, be investigated and tested through the normal parliamentary procedure—a Select Committee, the Public Accounts Committee and so on. The hon. Gentleman does not need my reassurance that that will happen; it is what actually happens. The issue is not just about our talking here about a funding model, but all the other areas of parliamentary scrutiny that will examine the funding models.

Danny Alexander: Will the Under-Secretary give way?

Anne McGuire: I am just about to answer the question about whether we are investing just now. Is that what the hon. Gentleman wanted to know?
Danny Alexanderindicated assent.

Anne McGuire: There you are, Mr. Amess—I can read minds as well. I should say in passing to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) that I am not touchy this morning; this is me on my normal, robust form. He had the pleasure of Lord Forsyth heading the Conservatives’ tax policy committee and if I were not robust, I would not have given the hon. Gentleman an opportunity that he did not think he wanted at the time.
I turn to the investment in IT, about which the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey asked. Of course, we have the ability pre-spend under section 28, particularly on IT. I am not prepared to give the hon. Gentleman the exact figures. We are issuing contracts and it would be difficult to put some of that information into the public domain. As I have already said, however, we operate under parliamentary scrutiny, which will allow for scrutiny of the figures at an appropriate time.
With the greatest respect, I do not think that any of us has focused on clause 10 in quite the way that we should have done. Nevertheless, I hope that the clause can now stand part of the Bill.

Danny Alexander: I will be brief because we have had a good debate. I had not intended my opening remarks to inject the note of party political rancour that has entered into the debate between the other two parties.

Anne McGuire: For the hon. Gentleman’s information, I may have inadvertently said section 28. I meant section 82. Perhaps I was thinking of former battles.

Danny Alexander: I am grateful for the Under-Secretary’s clarification, although I was a little disappointed by her response. I accept that members of the Committee have entered into the discussion about the funding of pathways and its delivery with good intentions, but I am not at all satisfied with the answers that I received about the specifics of the funding. We might hear more from the Chancellor in his pre-Budget report about levels of investment that may or may not be put into such matters, and I hope that the hon. Lady will take that up with her friends and colleagues in the Treasury.
Even if we accept that we trust the Government—I am not saying that I do, but they are asking us to take it on trust that the necessary amount will be spent—it worries me that no clause in the Bill makes clear the reciprocity of responsibility that the Under-Secretary rightly described and the commitment that I share that would not allow a future Government, perhaps of another party or of a political hue that chose to make substantial tax reductions and seek cost savings, to reduce the funding for pathways to work and to increase their use of the conditionality regime. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent that from happening and that would allow for the fact that, in future years, the support package might be thoroughly inadequate enough to undermine the use of the conditionality regime. I know that that is perhaps not the intention of Ministers here, but the Bill could be used by future Governments, too, and that remains my concern.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 11

Work-focused interviews

Question proposed, That the clause stand part ofthe Bill.

Tim Boswell: I have a few points to make about the clause. The more that I look at the Bill, the clearer it becomes that the next few clauses hang together and cannot be construed in isolation. I wish first to put on record my appreciation that, in this case, the Government have provided us with draft regulations and, as they refer to the substance of the action planned that we shall be discussing again in respect of clause 13, I shall at least touch on some of those issues.
As is evident from the existence of regulations and the absence of specific amendments, the clause is not particularly contentious. It gives rise to several points that I hope that Ministers will bear in mind when they work out the administrative arrangements and that relate to the reassurance of customers and the avoidance of a lot of appeal or difficulty when carrying them out subsequently.
It is clear, by definition, that the purpose of a work-focused interview is that it results in something positive. It is action directed towards the return of the person, the customer or the claimant to work, which is an entirely acceptable principle. Although I do not wish to go on as much as I did on Tuesday about such matters, my experience of looking at the pathways to pilots in Derbyshire confirmed that that approach is being taken, and I welcome it.
Within those pilots, there is no requirement for particular activity; the obligation is to appear for the interview. As we debate clauses 12 and 13, we will see that there is at least the potential of a specific obligation, albeit not necessarily to carry out a particular piece of work-focused activity, but, as it were, the noose is tightening on the claimant to do something about it. We could argue endlessly, but it would not be in the spirit of this Committee for me to suggest that that has a malicious or unpleasant overtone about the motivation of people who are claimants or customers. It is worth recording that figures I have seen from Jobcentre Plus suggest that, under the present pathways, 23 per cent of claimants never actually make the work-focused interview.
On a “saloon bar” interpretation, this could simply be because the claimants have not got a case and they do not turn up. More realistically, it may well be that, for many of them, the condition has worked its way out and they are perfectly fit and able to return to work. We celebrate that. There may be a variety of reasons, but clearly the work-focused interview is a something of a milestone along the way.
There are some interesting issues about the timing. If we take the pathways experience, my understanding is that the interview takes place in the eighth week of claim. That is over and beyond the six months of statutory sick pay, so it is quite a long time from the incidence of the condition or the initial incident. There may be a reason for not attending the interview, and some people would take the view that the system needs time to settle down and for some people to return to work. This is defensible, although my hon. Friends and I will be arguing later in a different context that there is a strong case for earlier intervention in the whole process when the condition establishes itself, even within the statutory sick pay period, but we will not get into that debate today. However, Ministers owe it to the Committee to say something about the optimum time or how flexible that can be in relation to the individual. I think that it is good to connect with people earlier in the process rather than leave them to nurse their difficulties until it is too late to find a remedy for them. 
There are issues, which we will return to in later clauses, about the nature of the interview and the basis of the action plan. I cannot help, if only by consanguinity with a member of my family and the sort of discussion we tend to have, although I cannot say we spend our whole weekends discussing the Welfare Reform Bill—

David Ruffley: Speak for yourself.

Tim Boswell: I am delighted to hear that my hon. Friend thinks of nothing else.
I am inclined to look at what may be termed the hard case, or the judicial case—the moment when somebody says I have not been treated fairly and I am going to appeal because they are stitching me up. In constituency traffic, that is the kind of thing we get asserted to us by constituents even if it is not the case. To avoid any doubt, that is not the sort of approach to this process that the pathways officers I saw were taking. It is not a penal process and nobody here wants it to be.
Even within the narrow terms of clause 11, which is about the rules for interview, and paves for the draft regulations that I mentioned, there are some interesting issues. What is an interview? What is co-operation with an interview, which is required under section 6 of the draft regulations? It is to talk about assisting and encouraging the person to remain in or to obtain work and about identifying activities the patient may undertake to make that more likely.
As we have said extensively in this Committee, many of the claimants may well have mental conditions, attitude problems and feelings about themselves that are probably not objectively justified, but we do not want to penalise people if they do not quite fit in the interviewing officer’s book. On the other hand, if someone sits in the interview in what used to be described in the armed forces as a mode of dumb insolence and refuses to answer any questions or to co-operate with the interviewer, one could reasonably argue, and the regulations appear to argue this, that they have not had an interview at all. They may have attended, but they have not played their part. There are some issues about how that is to be defined.
I am a little more concerned about the nature of the record and we may need to return to this on clause 13. An action plan ideally should be consensual and signed by both parties. It should say, “We have discussed your case. We realise that you have these problems which have been identified by the work-focused health-related assessment, but nevertheless we think that you could try to do this”, and the person will undertake to do so. There is also the question of a record of what is to take place. That is specified in the draft regulations.
As the Minister said the other day, the benefit situation for the individual should be incorporated in some way into the action plan. It is a little bit more than an action plan. In financial planning, if one went to an independent financial adviser, one would call it a report and a series of recommendations or agreed undertakings. It will be quite a complex document.
Some of these things may be done for good reason over the telephone. There is always an evidential problem. There is also a serious issue—again, I do not want to get at officers involved—concerning the appropriate bag of qualifications for the individual conducting the interview. What was immensely impressive about pathways to work was that the personal advisers clearly knew what their job was. They were highly motivated and in certain cases rather movingly so. I watched them from across the room carrying out interviews. When going into institutions one looks at the body language and it looked like a positive interview, with no lurking behind a screen and telling people to account for themselves.
To do what they will be asked to do, for not great remuneration, these officials need a full bag of qualifications. They have to have reporting skills. Something has to be written down. They have to have the personal adviser skills to try to tease out what is possible. The main point for the Minister that concerns me is that they have to have an understanding of the benefits situation because that is clearly relevant to the action plan. All my experience of the Department is that people can be very good on the benefit that they are administering, or they may be good at getting people back into work, but they are not omnicompetent.
Some of the difficulties arise where people are operating in silos. One person will understand the disability living allowance very well. I see the Under-Secretary of State is nodding. Another will understand the linking rules, someone else will know what the local employment position is for the person being coaxed back into work and someone else will have an input into the health-related assessment. That is all perfectly sensible but it all comes together in an action plan which has to be competent. It has to be authoritative because it can give rise, at least in principle in later clauses, to sanctions.
Unless I have grossly oversimplified the pathways pilot model, personal advisers on the benefits side talk primarily about the return-to-work credit, which is relatively straightforward and part of the whole complex, but not the overall bag of benefits. A benefits adviser would be brought in if necessary. We are asking a lot of these action plans. They are meant to advise and to help individuals. I am sure that that is the intention. They are meant to cover a lot of ground with people who have quite a lot of difficulties. It is important that they are well conceived and defensible—if necessary, in a tribunal—because we do not want people being given low-grade action plans that do not cover their needs, might contain factual errors or give rise to other arguments further down the chain when, for example, things do not turn out to be feasible. In this clause, we need to make certain that the work-focused interview is prescribed a proper gateway to action, that it can all be dealt with in a professional way and will not be skimped on or hurried through, which can give rise to difficulties. We will no doubt want to explore this matter seriously in other clauses. I do not find anything personally objectionable in the structure or regulations at all, so there areno amendments on it but Ministers do need to think about it.

David Ruffley: I endorse everything that my hon. Friend has said. I would like to add a further point. This clause underpins the rights and responsibilities agenda, which both the Government and Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition support. As with anything to do with rights and commensurate responsibilities, there is a fine balance to be struck. This clause seems to be about encouraging people to find out more about the support that they can get. The work-focused interview is a good thing. It is designed to showcase the types of support that are available to the customer. However, it must not frighten people off. There is always that tension throughout all these reforms.
Mind and the Child Poverty Action Group have raised a point about some of the literature that customers have been receiving in pilot areas, regarding their attendance at work-focused interviews. They have evidence—I am not going to quantify it—that a threatening tone has been deployed, threatening withdrawal of benefits for non-attendance. I am not suggesting that that is widespread at all, but CPAG wants a review of some of the language used. It quotes a standard letter sent to claimants regarding their attendance at a WFI in a pathways pilot:
“As your adviser, I need to meet with you to discuss how we can improve your chances of finding work, now or in the future. We want to make sure that you are getting the right support and are claiming all the right benefits. It is important that you attend and participate in this interview. If you do not, your benefit may be affected.”
I am used to the rough and tumble of politics. I used to be, when I had a proper job, a lawyer—[Interruption.]I was going to say that I earned an honest living as a lawyer—well, a living anyway. To many in this room, that kind of language may seem straightforward and factual. It touches all the right bases in one respect: it talks about the right support and making sure that people get the right amount of benefit. However, it has affected some customers. Sue Christoforou, the policy officer at Mind, said in evidence to the Select Committee for Work and Pensions earlier this year that, after receiving such letters, some of Mind’s clients had
“gone out immediately to get a job because they feel that is what the letter is saying to them, completely inappropriate jobs and after a number of days that job fails.”
I stress that that evidence undermines neither the propositions in the clause, nor the successes of pathways and the progress that it has made. However, will the Minister commission, or assure us that he will commission, a review, whereby officials continually analyse and perhaps audit such specimen letters to ensure that the language can be tweaked, not so that it loses its force, becomes meaningless prose or is so bland that the customer takes no note of it, but so that it does not threaten clients and customers—not my words—in the ways in which some bodies say it does? One hopes that such cases are in the minority.

Tim Boswell: I am much in sympathy with my hon. Friend. If the Committee needs reminding, many of those people are nervous of any administrative process and they feel that it is to their disadvantage. Does not he agree that, under the review that he is canvassing the Minister to undertake, it would also be wise if officials kept, as I hope they do, a continuing dialogue with the disability organisations, in particular those concerned with mental health, to ensure that such text is run past them to determine whether a better outcome can be achieved?

David Ruffley: I was going to come to that point. Taking on board what my hon. Friend said, will the Minister undertake to conduct a review of the language in conjunction with disability and support groups? The review might produce a standard letter, so that its drafting was left neither to individual branches of Jobcentre Plus nor to providers, which might have different takes on it. The Minister could then present the standard letter to the Committee at one of our sittings and after due consultation with outside groups. It might address the point that Mind has raised. We do not want even one person who may be fragile or have mental health problems to be upset by the process. One way of doing so would be with language on which we agree, which would be used uniformly during the roll-out and when the allowance was up and running.

Wayne David: The hon. Gentleman refers to the language that is deployed, but does he accept that often, there is a broader problem with such regulations? In support of my argument, I cite a document that Citizens Advice has circulated about an income support appeal. The decision communicated to the client read:
“The decision disallowing income support does not fall to be revised.”
To most people that means absolutely nothing. It is double Dutch. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a wider problem that we must consider?

David Ruffley: The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. The problem is about not only language that in the minds of some people may be threatening, but language that is meaningless, unhelpful and opaque. Everyone in this House must take more cognisanceof plain English. In the document that the hon. Gentleman quotes, the language bears no relation to how we talk in the 21st century. Ministers are sensitive to the issue and they are disability-aware, but will the Minister respond to my proposal for a standard letter requesting the work-focused-interview, the subject of this clause, to be made available to the Committee? If not, will he suggest why it is not a sensible proposition?

Danny Alexander: I endorse the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, although I think that the Department has set up groups involving bodies that represent disability organisations, which could advise on those matters. It is an important point.
I want to raise a few points in addition to those already raised on clause 11. I join the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) in welcoming the fact that we have draft regulations. A problem with draft regulations is that they sometimes raise more questions than they answer, and I should like to probe the Minister on a few aspects of them.
Draft regulation 6, on page 24 of the booklet, sets out in some detail the requirements that must be fulfilled for a claimant to be regarded as having taken part in the interview. A quite long list of conditions must be satisfied, such as that the person must give information about work-related activity that they have undertaken. However, perhaps the Minister will consider, when he redrafts the regulations for presentation to a Committee—of which we may both be members—after the Bill is passed, the fact that they do not contain, in addition to the obligations on claimants at the work-focused interviews, any reference to what the adviser will do. That is important because, as all parties in the Committee have pointed out, a sense of the reciprocity of responsibilities, and of the fact that advisers have responsibilities, is needed. I agree with the hon. Member for Daventry that pathways advisers seem to take their responsibilities seriously, but it is important to make it clear that the adviser’s role in assisting the claimant is an aspect of the work-focused interview. Ideally, that should be in the regulations.

Tim Boswell: Does the hon. Gentleman also agree with me about a further point, which I notice on looking at the draft regulations rather more carefully than I did earlier? There is no provision for a failure notice when a person has attended an interview but the official does not deem them to have been co-operative. There is no provision to issue a formal notice that states, “You attended the X jobcentre and we were going to have a work-focused interview, but my judgment is that your lack of co-operation meant that we did not achieve one.” Nor is there any evidential basis for being able to establish that, apart from the assertion of the officer concerned.

Danny Alexander: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, to which I hope the Minister will respond, about how the regulations will be interpreted when a decision is made about whether someone is deemed to have taken part in an interview, when there is the possibility that they were present but unco-operative. The way in which the decision is communicated is also important. Perhaps the Minister could dwell on that.
Without wishing to pre-judge the debate that we shall no doubt have on a later amendment, tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson), I think it might also be worth providing in the regulations that the work-focused interview should, at least in the first instance, include discussion of access to other benefits that people might get, to ensure that they receive their full entitlement.
Draft regulation 9 on page 25 of the booklet provides for waivers. It is my understanding that in the pathways areas a work-focused interview can be waived—and the pathways regulations specify this—when it would not be of assistance to the persons concerned, or would not be appropriate in the circumstances. However, draft regulation 9 states that a work-focused interview can be waived only if someone is likely to start work. Advisers will be able only to defer a work-focused interview, not to waive it, on the grounds that it is inappropriate or would not be of assistance. This may seem a pedantic point, but it is important because it restricts advisers’ discretion. Given that those ideas depart from previous practice, will the Minister explain the basis for that change in rationale? What implications does it have for advisers’ case loads and training? On work-focused interviews more generally, what thought has the Department given to ensuring that reasonable adjustments aremade to premises under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to ensure that claimants can participate fully in the interview?
My last, short series of points relates to the sanctions regime in the clause. [Interruption.] When the Minister gets his pen back, will he briefly set out the rationale behind that regime? The work-related activity component can be subject to a sanction amounting to 50 per cent. for the first four weeks and 100 per cent. after that. What is the rationale behind choosing the50 per cent. figure? What is the rationale behind choosing the four-week period, as opposed to two weeks, six weeks or three months? Why not have more stages of sanction and make the arrangements more progressive, rather than having two rather steep steps?

David Ruffley: I just wonder whether more steps would add to the complexity. I thought that the Committee and these proceedings were dedicated to eradicating complexity.

Danny Alexander: They may well add to the complexity. I was merely trying to encourage the Minister to describe the thinking that went into the provisions. He said earlier that every aspect of the Bill had been subject to lengthy discussion between Ministers and officials. He has no doubt chewed over the issue at some length, so he might be able to describe his thinking on it.
There is also a question about the period after which someone who has been sanctioned, but who has subsequently met the requirements, can have their benefit reinstated. How does that process work?
On the impact of the new sanctions regime, has the Minister made any forecast of how often he expects to use the new powers and how many people will be drawn into the net? He said earlier that part of the idea behind the Bill was to tackle child poverty, so has he made any assessment of the impact that the sanctions—in whatever volume he predicts they will be used—will have on child poverty?

Jim Murphy: Mr. Amess, I am delighted to see you in your place on this sunny morning. I know that it is sunny because I can feel the sun on my back and see it in the eyes of Opposition Members—at least, I think that that is why their eyes are glinting at me in the way that they are.
I had hoped that we would have finished our conversation/exchange/debate on the clause before our break, but I do not think that that will be possible. Although there are not many amendments, more questions have been posed on this clause than on many others to which more amendments were tabled. I shall try to rush through the points that have been raisedand to make some progress before and after thebreak, because we are talking largely about the draft regulations. They will be agreed later, should the Bill be agreed by this place and the other place, so there will be further opportunities to discuss the specifics.
Let me turn first to the points raised by the hon. Member for Daventry. The difficulty in conversing with him is that he asks a question and then helpfully moves close to answering it. That is not a bad trait; indeed, it is very helpful, because it occasionally saves me from asking officials. He also used the analogy of a saloon bar analysis, and although I have many images of him, I cannot see him in a saloon bar.
None the less, the hon. Gentleman asked several pretty reasonable questions, including what is meant by participating in an interview. That is described in regulation 6, on page 24 of the draft regulations, which shows that it is not simply a matter of attending. He then asked about enforcing a requirement to participate in a work-focused interview. That appears to be covered by regulation 4(1). Of course, the conversation about the draft regulations will continue as they make their way through this place.

It being twenty-five minutes past Ten o’clock,The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned till this day at half-past One o’clock.